A Scrum Masters journey through Agile and SCRUM

Menu

This Old House – Agile Edition

When you’re transitioning to Agile, there’s a lot going on all at once. It occurred to me it’s similar to home renovation – a really, really big home renovation. Personally, I LOVE old homes. I love going to see them and, one day, I want to buy one and fix it up. Sometimes, I walk into a house and while I’m oohing and aahing my husband is groaning. He’s groaning because the houses don’t generally meet any criteria he has for a home. I’m oohing because I can see the potential a house has. All you need is some imagination, good bones and time. That’s what an organization needs to create a great environment for Agility too.

IMAGINATION: To begin, you need to be able to ooh and aah instead of groan. You need to be able to see what is possible for teams, management and your users. If you don’t have imagination absolutely everything about the process will frustrate the hell out of you. You can’t hire someone to “take care of it” for you or oversee it. Nope. You need to be willing to be architect, general contractor and all the subs. If you have imagination and can envision what it will look like you have an open mind. An open mind is necessary because everything you thought you knew about “how your house was built” is going to get thrown out the window.

GOOD BONES: There are some things that just need to be in place. It’s no good and not practical if you have to bulldoze the house and start from scratch. You need smart people who are willing to opt in and give Agile a serious go. You need managers who are way more into the products their company produces than they are into their “turf”. These managers must also understand how to support, motivate and develop people. You need a culture of drive and commitment. You need a business who will look at the business differently. You need a company that invites people to opt in instead of mandates. OPEN MINDS are essential.

TIME: It took a long time to build what is, arguably, good enough. To change, grown, learn and be great you need time. You know the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”? An Agile transformation doesn’t happen overnight either. This renovation is going to take time. Since you know that, you also need to know to be patient. Also, you should know that you will never be “Done”. You will always and you should always look for things to improve on.

In my vision of a great Agile environment there are spaces for teams to work together, as a whole team and places to pair or collaborate with a smaller group. There’s technology available for distributed teams to use. People laugh! Anyone walking by can see what the team has going on and how awesome they are. There’s some corporate furniture around but teams can put their own identity on their spaces too. There’s a wall for anyone who wants to put an idea up to try and others can join in the effort. Directly opposite is another wall that celebrates the successes and failures (learning) from the efforts of these self-organizing teams. The environment is safe for everyone to be open, honest, disagree and try anything they think will be for the good for the team, the company or the user. This safe environment also has a hum – there’s energy and people are genuinely happy to be there and be a part of it. There’s also an endless supply of post-its (all colors & sizes), sharpies (all colors), magnets and flip charts.

As with any major project, you’re bound to hit some snags. That’s OK. It’s all part of the adventure. You have no idea what you will learn along the way and the creative solutions you will find. The time, thought and care you put into creating this environment will be huge. If done well, at the end, you have teams of completely happy and motivated individuals. You have a safe environment where learning, trying and trying more is encouraged. You have users who are loyal and more than satisfied with the products you are producing. All this because of the environment. There’s no need for razing the house to get to the land. Keep what’s good and useful, ditch the rest and strive for the perfect environment.